The future of renewable energy in Mongolia

The future potential for renewable energy in Mongolia is recognized in its fifteen year renewable energy program.


Under this ambitious scheme, the Government has set out plans for renewable energy to reach between 20-25% of total energy production by 2020.

However in a country where the focus tends to be fixed firmly on traditional fossil fuels, sometimes this potential gets overshadowed. This may be about to change. A recent visit to Mongolia by a delegation from German renewable energy company RENAC concluded that; ‘the time is exactly right to support capacity building… in the field of renewable energies in Mongolia’. The delegation from the Berlin-based concern visited Mongolia on a fact finding mission late last year and have now made public their encouraging conclusions. First and foremost, the Mongolian renewable energy sector, compared to other developing countries, has experience with projects in remote areas, concludes RENAC. This is crucial in a vast country with the worlds lowest population density. Married with the already existing Government strategy for the development of renewable energy which includes an energy law with feed-in-tariffs for solar and wind projects, Mongolia appears ready to begin this new energy adventure. RENAC specialises in the conveyance of experience and knowledge of the production, planning and engineering of renewable energy technologies, their financing, marketing and sales, and the opening up of international markets for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. The visit to Mongolia came as part of its so called TREE project, Transfer Renewable Energy and Efficiency, an international training program which, with the support of the German Foreign Office, hopes to transfer German renewable energy know-how abroad. “Through this further development to the TREE project, we can now extend the transfer of expertise in renewable energy and energy efficiency”, said RENAC’s CEO, Berthold Breid. The Mongolian Government backed National Renewable Energy Program 2005-2020 (NREP 2005-2020) has itself concluded that until now Mongolia is overly dependent on coal and ‘renewable energy utilisation has not been considered with the same strategic importance as conventional energy development’. Further, the program laments lack of economic incentive policies, few financing mechanisms and a fundamental lack of public awareness of the significance of renewable energy. Although the RENAC visit was seen as a success, its report identifies several areas where progress needs to be made if Mongolia is to take full advantage of its renewable resources as well as an urgent need to look to cleaner energy solutions than coal. The report is critical of Mongolia‘s conventional power sector, which, though improving energy efficiency in a number of projects, is far from being optimal. It cites the highly inefficient use of heat energy, be it for heating homes and other buildings through the distance heating system or the use of in the growing “ger” districts in the capital. ‘The latter is causing tremendous air pollution in Ulaanbaatar, one of the most urgent problems to be solved,’ it concludes. Following the first series of talks and workshops which found that ‘the know-how currently available in Mongolia is limited and that especially practical training is needed to operate the plants which have already been installed,’ RENAC is planning to follow-up with two Mongolia-specific training packages. Taking the form of online classes and seminars in Berlin, the first will focus on renewable energy resource assessment including an introduction to technologies not yet in use in Mongolia. The second will be a seminar on the integration of renewable energies in the power grid and power sector development. Aimed at stakeholders from the public sector, universities, industry representatives from the power sector and financing institutions, these seminars are a crucial step if the ambitious targets outlined in the NREP 2005-2020 are to be met. The Government has pledged to supply more than 100, currently off-grid, Soum centres with renewable energy and supply every rural family with solar power by 2020. RENAC, is an international provider of training in renewable energies and energy efficiency. It has so far trained participants from over 100 countries in Berlin and abroad and through its Blended Learning program offers customised training with a high practical content to targeted groups.

Source : ubpost

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